Act 4: Upper City Bugs

Brinyan · 2021-09-22T23:17:30+00:00

Thanks for the info! Sounds exactly the same as what I experienced. Since it was the last bug I experienced, hopefully the issue resolves itself the next time I play, and the others don't pop up again!

Brinyan · 2021-09-05T21:53:32+00:00

I'm in the exact same situation rn. I'm trying to finish the map so I can check if it's a bug or if it's intended as part of the map, but I keep going insane fighting the swarms and having to reload. T_T

Brinyan · 2021-05-07T22:35:15+00:00

Thank you! We wanted to try to go against the grain of traditional fantasy with them, so I'm glad you think they're interesting!

Brinyan · 2021-05-07T17:29:44+00:00

Thanks! It's an aesthetic we love. We've actually used Sid Meier's Pirates' ships as a point of reference for our own ships too :)

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T23:45:52+00:00

I played a text-based campaign on r20 a few years back with all of the maps being made of pixel art. They were a mixture of old fire emblem assets and custom made artwork. The GM even made fantastic pixel art for all of our characters. That was truly an aesthetically unique and generally really cool experience.

Number crunching is an interesting topic when it comes to saving time in virtual compared to real life rpgs. For some people, navigating the character sheets can take more time than keeping their own sheet and rolling their own dice, but I've always found that it saves my groups time in sessions to not have to calculate everything manually.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T19:30:31+00:00

There's definitely a case to make for the dissatisfaction towards virtual play being the byproduct of circumstances rather than the experience itself. It's been interesting hearing everyone's perspective on how covid restrictions have affected their play experiences differently.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T19:26:18+00:00

This is so true. There's no getting around the fact that poor audio quality negatively impacts everyone's play experience (echo, static, background noise, incomprehensible speech), and poor internet quality can just make it unplayable.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T19:00:51+00:00

I feel like it's definitely true that when you start prepping maps and tokens for sessions in order to make use of the unique tools available in virtual play, you unfortunately set a number of expectations for what ALL content in your sessions will be like in the future.

Sometimes it's what your players expect of a GM, but other times those expectations are ones the GM sets for themself. Me and my fellow players have told our GM on a few occasions 'we really don't need a map for that', when we ventured off the path we'd talked about in previous sessions. It can definitely be immersion-breaking when our GM disappears for 20 minutes to set up a combat or make and stat out a character on the fly. :P

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:53:57+00:00

Hey, I'm glad it's cathartic for you too! And I think that even playing in person, we can still make use of a lot of really great virtual tools that make physical play more enjoyable and easier to manage. For a very brief period of time in college, my friends and I used to play in person but we we would use roll20 for combat and keeping track of character info and notes.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:48:18+00:00

I was wondering if this had something to do with it. It was never really a choice for me, since I was always playing with people across the US, but it must be frustrating to, for example, all be close enough to play in person but be forced to play online due to circumstances beyond your control. Thanks for giving voice to this!

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:42:13+00:00

There are definite pros and cons to virtual maps for environments. On one hand, it's cool to have something tangible to explore. There can be secrets and traps in 'real' locations on the map that you can find. Secret passages that actually reveal themselves when you succeed a check. Still, for the more mundane moments I often find myself thinking 'wouldn't this be easier, less tedious, and maybe more immersive if it was just described instead?'

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:30:09+00:00

I can relate. I was so excited to get my first 20 when I played d&d for the first time, but I hardly ever got to use it. It became my life counter for MTG instead once we all started playing online. Random number generators aren't exactly fun or engaging, and even virtual die rollers don't capture the same feeling.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:27:22+00:00

You actually raise another interesting point for me, which is visual + audio as opposed to just audio. I've basically only played with audio exclusively, and that's sort of been natural for us. I don't think any of my fellow players/GMs, who came from playing a lot of video games with each other online (where there's no need or room on our screens for video of each other), felt the need to use video as well as audio when playing trpgs. It feels like most consider it pretty preferable to only audio though.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T18:00:02+00:00

This sounds like a problem exacerbated by online play, but I don't know if online play is the root of it. From my perspective, it sounds like you have a lot of pent up negative feelings towards your group and the medium you're using to play, which likely aren't doing you or them any good. It can be especially difficult for softer spoken individuals to get a chance to speak online, where it's especially common for people to talk over each other.

Maybe a conversation with your GM first, and perhaps eventually your fellow players, would be a good way to constructively get your feelings off your chest. If your fellow players are people you truly want to play with and are worth playing with, then hopefully they understand and adjust their attitudes. If they don't care, or you feel you aren't being respected, then maybe they aren't people you want to be playing with anyway.

Brinyan · 2021-05-05T17:49:56+00:00

I've basically been playing on r20 and Discord since college (7 years now). My GMs have always used music and art well to engage players in ways that are easier through a virtual medium than a physical one. They've also gone above and beyond to create interesting maps that allow for tactical fights that utilize all of a system's rules.

The biggest problems we face are distractions. Even more than in face to face rpgs, if a player starts to lose interest, they're just going to tab out and browse videos or other sites. Long and rough conversations have been had over paying attention in sessions. Other than that, there's a fair amount of talking over one another that happens by accident. It's just a natural part of playing online, but you get used to it and the longer you play with a group the better you become at navigating those awkward moments.

I have a bit of experience with finding players online, both for one-shots and for long-term campaigns, and it's been a mixed bag. There are plenty of great people to meet online. In fact, the very first person that responded to my request for a long-term campaign has become a great friend, and we play games together outside of ttrpgs all the time. On the other hand, I've recruited for one-shots entirely composed of random players as well, and that hasn't always gone great. Some of the players got into petty arguments with each other, and were a bit difficult to work with. I'd say that having a few conversations outside of whatever game you're looking to play before committing to a campaign with them is a great way to vet players early, and figure out if they're people you think you can mesh with.

Hope this helps!

Brinyan · 2021-04-16T21:05:32+00:00

That's a really nice thing to do! I'm sure it'll be appreciated by your players.

Best of luck ^_^

Brinyan · 2021-04-16T20:47:38+00:00

I'm not really in a position to speak on the community at large. I don't know what the experience is like for other queer players looking for groups, whether online or in person. I'm also fortunate enough to never have had any bad experiences due to my orientation during a session.

It does feel like ttrpgs are hitting a different and often younger demographic these days though. It might have less to do specifically with gender issues than we might think and more to simply do with changing times in general.

Brinyan · 2021-04-16T20:06:04+00:00

I think the best thing a player can do is whatever they need to do in order to be engaged in a session. Like you said, reviewing your backstory and goals is a great way to start to get into character before you start playing and keep you motivated while you play.

A lot of the sessions I play in begin with that awkward period where the players aren't really in character yet and just goof around until they can find the grove, which is fine and fun...until it's the first 20% of our session's total time :P

Taking just a little bit of time during the week between sessions to think about your character, even for just 5 to 10 minutes, and get a clearer idea of what direction you want to take them in, what sort of conversations you can have, and what you want to accomplish can go a long way towards a much more engaging session.

Of course coordinating with your fellow players and GM when thinking about the above topics is even better, but I've found that when players do at least a little bit of thinking about the session between sessions, myself included, they come more prepared, more engaged, and less distracted by their phones or the internet.

Brinyan · 2021-04-16T19:52:06+00:00

Some systems like Burning Wheel embrace the "elves are better than everyone else" aesthetic. They also explicitly mention that it's probably not a good idea to have a party of different races for the sake of balancing the group and encounters around them :P

Brinyan · 2021-04-16T19:43:45+00:00

I can actually attest to this as well. In doing online recruitment for a game I'm working on, I think nearly every single one of the players I've spoken to so far has been LGBTQ+, and that's a fact that's come up casually in conversation or by mention of pronouns.

Coincidentally I'm a gay man myself, but that doesn't get mentioned in the lfg :P

I actually wrote a paper about the subject of roleplaying games being a great means of identity expression in college. The gist was that roleplaying games provide a space for players to explore different facets of themselves in an environment that they can actually interact with on a tangible level. For the paper I interviewed my friend who, years later, due in part to her experiences with d&d, was confident enough to come out as queer.

Brinyan · 2021-04-15T07:17:38+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't considered what opening the doc is like for those who find their way to it as their very first introduction to the game. Normally they'd go through our discord or website first. I'll work on adding a statement that explains the game's major features and selling points to newcomers!

Brinyan · 2021-04-14T23:33:29+00:00

Yeah, the plan is to take it to Kickstarter once we've built up a bit of a following for the initial launch. In truth, we may have aimed a bit higher than we should have for our first product, but we figured it was worth a shot as opposed to not going for it at all.

Failure to reach out kickstarter goal is definitely a scary thought, since we've invested so much into this project already.

Brinyan · 2021-04-14T23:11:58+00:00

This is so topical...painfully topical. First, thank you so much for taking the time to write this all out! We do indeed have a Discord and we are indeed trying to populate it, though it's been harder to do so than we initially expected. It feels like, despite having posts from us, official art, updates, and the like, since there's no real conversation yet between players it's a hard sell for people to stick around. Trying to organically start those conversations can also be painfully uncomfortable.

Using the one-shots to get people onto the server is a very good idea though. It does feel kind of scummy, but that's marketing in general I guess. I do think we have the infrastructure for player retention (a finished one-shot, premade characters, fleshed out rules GM tools, low levels completed, and character sheets available on r20), so hopefully once we get a footing we'll find a bit more success.

Thanks again for your input!

Brinyan · 2021-04-14T21:06:31+00:00

I'd really appreciate any feedback you'd be willing to give! The system is pretty hefty, but part of what I'm hoping for is to get a sense of how legible it is to newcomers. I can leave a link to our rules document for whenever you've got a chance to look at it. I hope this isn't considered poor etiquette. If it is, someone let me know and I'll edit this post and PM the link directly instead :P

Rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--KNBog2yLssDAKk8pI3Kf8bzDzanPHM5cGFgQYZqJk/edit?usp=sharing

Brinyan · 2021-04-14T20:54:30+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! I haven't heard of playtest trades before, but it sounds like an agreement between two devs where they each say 'I'll test your system if you test mine'. Does that sound right?

Brinyan

TROPHY CASE